


asking about a scar (and i know i gave it to you months ago)

by lanyon



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: cc-feelsmeme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was younger, Clint wished really hard for someone.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>They could be on the road to anywhere and they invariably are. Clint's fingers rest on Coulson's and, like the trapeze or the bowstring, he has learned the value of grip and he doesn't leave bloody fingerprints anymore.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	asking about a scar (and i know i gave it to you months ago)

**Author's Note:**

> In response to [this prompt](http://cc-feelsmeme.livejournal.com/1635.html?thread=51043#t51043) at the Clint/Coulson Prompt Meme, with just the tiniest bit of tidying up. (When he was younger, Clint wished really hard for someone. Turns out all the things he wished for show up in Phil. 
> 
>  
> 
> (Practical Magic, but run with it how you wish)
> 
>  
> 
> +Title from _We Are Young_ , by Fun.

He has two secrets but he doesn’t believe in magic.

There’s nothing magical about horse-shit and elephant shit and it’s hard to believe in magic when the sawdust smells of piss and the straw in the animal stalls smells sweet and rancid and cloying. There’s burnt popcorn and vomit and there are days when he wants to heave his guts out. The glint and glitter of the circus is lost on him, if it was ever found, and the fairy-lights strung between the caravans glisten with harsh light. He doesn’t believe in magic.

The secret is that he hasn’t believed in magic for a long time. Some orphans do; dear Santa, bring me a mommy and a daddy but he had a mommy and a daddy and they weren’t all that great. So he puts his head down, except when he raises it up and his eyes narrow and he looks past the fairy lights and the mounds of shit and his field of vision narrows down to a single target. Bullseye.

The other secret is that he still makes wishes; on the first star he sees at night and he hates when weeks pass with cloudy nights or when they’re too close to a big city to see anything other than the sick orange glow of streetlights reflected off a heavy sky. He wishes on the wishbone of a chicken dinner or when he finds a dandelion gone to seed and he can inhale and exhale in a pursed-lipped puff of air. They’re weeds, you know, someone tells him but he thinks they’re beautiful. 

He likes seeing beauty where others don’t. It’s in the tip of an arrow and the inhale and exhale. It’s in the calm that he seeks without knowing.

\-----

He doesn’t read, although he can. Words on a page annoy him; last notices and funeral notices and hymnals smeared with sticky fingerprints in the orphanage. He likes graffiti though, stark colours on grey walls and Clint was here. He likes to leave his mark. He likes stories but he’s not a story teller. 

He’s a hooligan, they tell him. A trouble-maker. He needs someone to keep him on the straight and narrow. Sometimes his brother does just that but, more often than not, Clint is left to wandering. He thinks maybe he’d like someone to guide him, sometime. Not someone who’ll train him to be just another circus freak or someone who’ll wind him up like a clockwork and too-blunt weapon, fists flailing because townies are stupid and Clint can’t back down. 

Someone to nudge him in the right direction; it’s a stray thought and one that unravels like a faded ribbon in the wind because he is so often left to wandering.

\----

He likes it when they stop near forests and he can climb trees and hide and watch. Sometimes, he listens to the younger kids’ bedtime stories. 

There’s this one about a woman who wishes for her love. He’ll have hair as black as a crow’s feather and skin as white as snow and lips the colour of blood and Clint scoffs quietly because she’s wishing for a circus clown or a corpse. 

His stomach squirms. Wishes do that to him. He peers up and up, and the tree branches shift and the leaves whisper and there is a star. His stomach squirms. 

Kind eyes. It’s just a thought. 

\----

He sits cross-legged on the trapeze platform when the lights have long gone down and he’ll have to feel his way down the ladder or hold his breath and jump to the safety net. He closes his eyes. He is sixteen and weary and his fingertips are bleeding and his forearm is bruised. He picks at the scabs and he knows it makes it worse and he raises his fingers to his lips and they are blood-red now. 

He wonders if this is what life tastes like, copper-sweet and salty, and he sways a little on his perch and he thinks he could stay here for hours or for nights on end. He could be like a balloon, set free, until someone shoots him down and the idea both excites and appalls him. He could be like a balloon, set free, until he deflates or until he is pulled home and twisted into shapes that are not him. 

 

\----

If he had one wish, and he has had dozens upon dozens; he’s had as many wishes as there are dandelions in the midwest, he’d wish for home. He’s not fucking Dorothy, though, and Barney says that the circus is their home and they’re rolling stones and maybe he’ll always have itchy feet and no moss. He clicks his heels together when no one’s looking and then he sprints through this worn-down meadow of dried, yellow grass and laughter and roll up, roll up. The amazing Hawkeye is here. 

Maybe this is his home, with the spotlight and the applause, like a drumroll and this is what it is to be wanted. He’s almost sure this is what it is. Maybe this is what it is to be loved. Admiring, approving looks and he blows kisses to the prettiest girl in the front row, with her hair done out in golden curls and it is too obvious a beauty for him; it is too safe. 

He wishes for danger, too, a little.

\----

Natasha Romanov is almost what he has in mind but her beauty is searing. 

After her, Clint spends a long time running. There's a constant cramp in his thigh, and no trees or faded ribbons or fairy lights. A reason; he wishes for a reason.

\---

The first time Clint meets Phil Coulson is approximately thirty seconds after Coulson shoots him in the leg. Clint knew that the suits were after him but he’d been led to believe that he was an asset, not a target. 

Is this how you treat assets? he asks, through gritted teeth. ‘Cause I’m not feeling the love. 

If I wanted to kill you, says Coulson, his voice cool and calm, I’d be closing your eyes right now and you’d be giving me less backchat. 

There’s a smear of blood at the corner of Coulson’s mouth and his eyes are kind. He tightens his tie around Clint’s leg and asks if Clint can walk.

I don’t know, says Clint. Someone just shot me in the leg. 

Come on, Barton, says Coulson. We’re bringing you in. 

It sounds a lot like home, when he puts it like that, with his arm around Clint’s waist, and Clint’s been without for so long. 

\----

There is the inhale and the exhale. 

Talk to me, Barton, and you’re going to live to regret that, sir, and there is the beauty that no one else sees, and the kind eyes, and the words to guide him home, to safety and to danger. There is the quiet, too, and there is no applause and no pretty, ringleted girl, and if Clint sings along with Queen in the car at the top of his lungs, Coulson just laughs and reaches across, the heel of his hand resting on the old bullet wound in the middle of Clint’s thigh. 

It's a kind of magic, sir.

They could be on the road to anywhere and they invariably are. Clint's fingers rest on Coulson's and, like the trapeze or the bowstring, he has learned the value of grip and he doesn't leave bloody fingerprints anymore. Instead, there's the curve of Coulson's smile (the beauty that no one else sees).

\----

He doesn’t make wishes anymore.


End file.
